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So, Can You Make A Barcelona Chair Now? Re: Trade Dress Rights Litigation
Monday, March 11, 2013

We had a reader inquire recently about the status of the litigation involving Knoll and its claim to trade dress rights in the iconic Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair. Our past post on the litigation can be found here. Here's an image of Knoll's chair:


 

We checked the docket in the Knoll case and report that it settled in 2010 with a stipulated permanent injunction that prohibits the accused infringers from making, selling, or importing into the U.S. any products that are configured like or "substantially identical" to the products shown in Knoll's asserted trademark registrations. The image for the Barcelona chair trade dress registration is:

So, to answer the question: can you make the Barcelona chair? Probably not without risk of an enforcement action from Knoll. However, the sheer number of Barcelona chairs available today (just Google "Barcelona Chair") raises questions about the validity of Knoll's trade dress registration.

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